Bureaucratic Shuffle -- One Man's Story

Earl Brow and a number of other Mount Dora residents on the west side of town woke up one day last week to find to find little or no water pressure.

They were upset and a couple telephone calls to city hall and the Department of Transportation did little to relieve the situation.

Brow picks up the story:

''I called city hall in Mount Dora and asked whether there had been a water line accident. I was told the state Department of Transportation was installing a traffic light and doing other work at the intersection of Old U.S. Highway 441 and County Road 19A in the Golden Triangle area.

''I said, 'Don't you think we should have been notified by the city that the water was going to be off during the work.' I was told it was up to DOT. I called DOT in Leesburg and was told the agency expected the city of Mount Dora to contact water users about the temporary problem.''

And so goes passing the bureacratic buck.

Normal water pressure was resumed about 10:30 a.m.

The new Democratic war chant in Lake County could be: Wait until 1988.

Republican school board members Kyleen Fisher, Georgia Phillips and Anna Cowin can breathe easier. A member of the Lake County Democratic Committee said it doesn't appear likely that the three will have to face any Democratic challengers in their re-election bids later this year.

Likewise for veteran GOP warhorses Lex Deems and Tom Windram, who will seek re-election to the Lake County Commission.

It was only two years ago that Democratic party leaders were chanting ''Wait until 1986.'' But now the date has changed. Meanwhile, the local Democrat party heirarchy is still grasping for keys to to derail the GOP grip on local seats of power in a county where the 30,000 registered Democrats outnumber GOP voters by about 2,500.

Joan Wollin, Leesburg, still is pounding the pavement for support in her Democratic gubernatorial campaign. Longtime friend and former state attorney Gordon Oldham Jr., Leesburg, introduced Wollin at a recent gathering of the Lake County Bar Association as ''the next governor of Florida.''

Wollin incredulously wasted little time in blasting local attorneys for not contributing to her thus-far anemic campaign coffer.

Spiritual uplift: A new elevator is in use for parishioners at St. Mary's of the Lake Catholic Church in Eustis. Can a heaven-bound escalator be far behind?

A member of the Molokai Men's Club at the Molokai Mobile Home Park, Tavares, passed on this recent story:

A little boy -- who returned to New Jersey after spending his vacation with grandparents who live in a Florida mobile home park -- told his friends, ''My grandparents live in a little tin house in a big beautiful park surrounded by a wall with a guard to make sure they can't get out. And people in the park ride tricycles and wear name tags in case they get lost.''